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Teenagers: A Natural History by David Bainbridge

Uh-oh. In recent years there have been controversial revisionist texts intended to rehabilitate Joseph Stalin, Mao Tse-tung and the Spanish Inquisition - but here's an even more dangerous and unpalatable prospect: a book telling us we've got teenagers all wrong, that we need to understand them better.

Those of you with adolescent children, or who may have merely bumped into a 14-year-old in the street and ended up with a punctured lung, may be more disposed to understand a little less and throttle a little more. To explain something is not, after all, to alter it. The author of this book does not dispute that almost all teenagers are morose, sullen, ungrateful, antagonistic, pretentious, awkward, aggressive, libidinous and suicidal - often all at the same time. What he does is tell us why they are like this, for which many thanks.